Look before you leap.
While browsing entertaining YouTube videos, I stumbled upon a PewDiePie video where he shared his experience installing Arch Linux and customizing Hyprland. I had been considering switching to Linux for a while, and that video sparked my enthusiasm to dive in.
Without researching thoroughly, I downloaded Arch Linux and Rufus to make my pendrive bootable and started the installation process without backing up my Windows files. Yes, you read that correctly. After wiping my storage, I realized I hadn't saved my college projects, assignments, or important photos. Frustrated with myself, I pushed through the Arch Linux installation, encountering countless issues and getting stuck in a loop of tutorials. After hours of struggle, I finally got Arch Linux running. Next, I attempted to install and configure Hyprland, searching YouTube for guidance. Despite watching numerous videos, I couldn't grasp how to configure it from scratch. Glancing at my phone, it was 2 AM and seven hours had passed. Exhausted and frustrated, I went to bed.
The next morning, with a clearer mind, I installed pre-configured dotfiles from GitHub, which took another two hours. This seemed to solve my problems, or so I thought.
For a few days, everything ran smoothly, and I used Linux much like I did Windows. Then, college assigned ten programming tasks. I hadn't installed any software except Google Chrome and had no clue how to install Windows-only programs. I settled for a subpar open-source alternative to MS Office. Next, I needed a code editor, likely Visual Studio Code, to write and test code, often relying on code from an LLM. Following random sudo commands from a chatbot, I installed VS Code. When I launched it, it took three minutes to open, time I could have spent completing a task. Somehow, I finished the assignments.
Curious about why VS Code was so slow, I started searching for answers, initially typing vague queries into the chatbot with little success. After an hour, I turned to forums and discovered others facing the same issue, "Electron apps launching slowly with specific NVIDIA GPUs." I managed to configure the system to use the CPU for such apps, which resolved the issue. This experience taught me to think logically, read documentation carefully, and avoid blindly entering commands.
Ultimately, switching to Linux gave me basic knowledge of its workings and a better appreciation for Windows after I reinstalled it.